South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,21

she disappeared from view, leaving me and this middle-aged stranger behind.

“I won’t take much of your time,” the man said, his tone of voice placid. He was neither angry nor excited. As though holding open a door for someone, he continued to grasp my arm tightly. “Let’s have some coffee and talk.”

I could have walked away. I don’t want any coffee, and I have nothing to talk about with you. First of all, I don’t know who you are, and I’m in a hurry, so if you’ll excuse me, I could have said. But I clammed up and just stared. Finally I nodded and did as he said, following him back into the coffee shop. Perhaps I was afraid of something in that powerful grip. I could feel a strangely immovable force there. More machinelike than human, his grip on me was perfect, never wavering an ounce in pressure. If I had refused his suggestion, what would he have done to me? I couldn’t imagine.

But along with being scared, I was half curious as well. I wanted to find out what he could possibly want to talk with me about Maybe. it would lead to some information about the woman. Now that she’d disappeared, this man might be the only link connecting her and me. Besides, the man wasn’t about to beat me up in a coffee shop, was he?

We sat down at a table across from each other. Until the waitress came, we didn’t say a word. We sat there, staring at one another. The man ordered two coffees.

“Why, may I ask, were you following her for so long?” he asked me politely.

I couldn’t answer.

With expressionless eyes, he looked long and hard at me. “I know you were following her all the way from Shibuya,” he said. “Follow someone that far, and they’re bound to catch on.”

I didn’t reply. She realized I was following her, went into this coffee shop, and called this man.

“If you don’t want to say anything, that’s okay. I know what’s going on without your having to tell me.” He may have been worked up, but you couldn’t tell from the polite, quiet way he spoke.

“There are several options here,” the man said. “I’m not joking. Whatever I feel like doing, believe me, I can do.”

Then he fell silent and continued to look at me. As if to give me the message that he didn’t need any explanation, since he had the situation under control. As before, I said not a word. “But I don’t want things to get out of hand. I don’t want to cause a scene. Understand me? This time only,” he said. He raised his right hand, which was lying on the table, reached into his overcoat pocket, and took out a white envelope. All the while, his left hand remained on the table. The envelope was nothing special, just a plain white business envelope. “Just take this, and don’t say a word. I know someone put you up to this, and I’d like to settle the whole matter amicably. Not a word about what’s happened. Nothing special happened to you today, and you never met me. Understand? If I ever do find out you’ve said anything, you can rest assured I will find you and take care of the matter. So I’d like you to forget about following her. Neither one of us wants any trouble. Correct?”

Saying this, the man laid the envelope in front of me and stood up. Snatching up the check, he paid the cashier and strode out of the coffee shop. I sat there dumbfounded. Finally I picked up the envelope on the table and looked inside. There were ten ten-thousand-yen bills. Crisp, new ten-thousand-yen bills. My mouth was parched. I shoved the envelope in my pocket and left the shop. I looked around, making sure that the man wasn’t there, then hailed a cab and went back to Shibuya, where this misadventure all began.

Years later, I still had that envelope with the money. Without ever opening it again, I stuck it in a drawer in my desk. On nights when I couldn’t sleep, I could see his face. Like an unlucky premonition of something, his face floated up clearly in my head. Who the hell was he anyway? And was that woman Shimamoto?

I came up with several theories. It was a puzzle without a solution. I would think of a hypothesis, only to shoot it down. The most convincing explanation was that this man was